Liberty’s girls basketball upperclassmen have experienced enough of Easton’s domination of the Hurricanes over the years to turn the tables and defeat the Red Rovers, 42-32, on Jan. 3 at Liberty.

“I wanted to win this game so bad because I’ve been on this team for four years now, and we’ve lost to them every single time, and not just basketball,” said Liberty’s Tula Sobrinski (9 points). “I play multiple sports, and I’ve never ever beat an Easton team, so I wanted this so bad. Senior year, one of my last opportunities, the regular season, so I was like, we have to do it.”

Hurricane teammate Anijah Davis (9 points) initially led the charge, scoring nine of Liberty’s 11 first-quarter points.

“Getting that first nine points, that helped us a lot,” Davis said. “I’m not saying they’re a rival team for us, but it’s been very competitive with them. This one was very important to us. We knew it wasn’t gonna be easy.”

Liberty led, 17-15, at halftime, helped by Hurricanes Shawna Beatty and Chloe Rumelhart (4 points) whose size offset Easton’s Kourin Carew and Lianna Cole.

“We had to practice specific things to work around their two, strong bigs,” said Sobrinski. “We have a team of a lot of guards. We also have two bigs, but we usually don’t play with both of them at the same time. This was our first game that we really used them both at the same time.”

Hurricane guard Ava Kopetskie (20 points) opened the third quarter with a triple followed by a bucket and a free throw.

Sobrinski re-entered the game with 2:30 left in the third quarter and hit consecutive 3-pointers, and Kopetskie added another three to open up a 10-point lead over the Rovers.

“I had talked to the coach during halftime because I was mad that I missed several threes in the first half,” said Sobrinski, “and I was like, I know I have to turn it up, so then I just kept shooting, and it ended up working out for me.”

Liberty went on a 7-0 run early in the fourth quarter while Easton missed seven free throws in the last eight minutes.

“Based on my research, I saw that we haven’t beaten them since December of 2015, so it was huge,” said Liberty coach Jarrett Carnes. “Since I’ve been here, we lost to them nine times, so now we can say we’re 1-9 against them in the Carnes era. It’s a confidence boost for the girls, and that’s what it’s all about.

“If we’re not knocking shots down or doing what we’re supposed to do, they’ll sit in a 2-3 zone all night, and it’ll be a rough night for us. We were prepared. We sat in the 2-3 zone too, and from time to time, going with our two bigs, Chloe and Shawna in there, because they have Kourin Karew and Lianna Cole, and that’s been a problem for us.”

Also worth noting were the mental lapses in Easton’s game versus Liberty’s focus.

“We knew we had to be locked-in, so just being aware,” said Davis, regarding the Hurricanes’ way to victory. “We knew what type of team Easton was, we knew what we were getting into, and especially with the crowd. The crowd is usually very loud and stuff, but honestly, it comes from the practices. We could tell they were getting in their head and getting frustrated.”

Added Sobrinski, “And we took advantage of that.”